- Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension: FBI says it will maintain cover-up attempts
Source: United Press International
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation informed Minnesota’s highest investigative agency that it will not share evidence and information related to the [murder] of Alex Pretti. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said in a statement that it was informed by the FBI on Friday it would not be sharing any information. … Pretty, 37, was shot multiple times by federal agents on Jan. 24, while observing their activities in the Minneapolis area. He was the second civilian [murdered] in the area by federal agents, weeks after the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good. The FBI has also refused to cooperate with Minnesota authorities in the investigation into Good’s [murder] at the hands of federal agent Jonathan Ross.” (02/16/26)
- Apple starts testing end-to-end encrypted RCS messages on iPhone
Source: The Verge
“Apple is starting to test end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) RCS messages with the developer beta of iOS 26.4 released Monday. Apple announced plans last year to support the feature, and once fully available, it will let iPhone and Android users send encrypted RCS messages to each other across platforms. However, with this initial implementation, Apple is only testing RCS encryption between Apple devices. It’s ‘not yet testable with other platforms,’ Apple says.” (02/16/26)
https://www.theverge.com/tech/879792/apple-iphone-android-rcs-messages-end-to-end-encrypted
- Sudan: Strike on market kills at least 28 people, rights group says
Source: ABC News
“Strikes on a market in central Sudan’s Kordofan region killed at least 28 people and wounded dozens, said a rights group on Monday, as the war between the army and a paramilitary group nears its three-year mark. Emergency Lawyers, a rights group tracking violence against civilians, said in a statement that drones bombed a market in Sudri locality in North Kordofan province on Sunday, during a time the market was bustling with civilians, ‘exacerbating the humanitarian tragedy.’ The group said the number of casualties was likely to rise. … The fighting between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese military erupted into a full-blown war across the country in April 2023. So far, at least 40,000 people have been killed and 12 million displaced, according to the World Health Organization.” (02/16/26)
- ByteDance to curb AI video app after Disney legal threat
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“Chinese technology giant ByteDance has pledged to curb a controversial artificial intelligence (AI) video-making tool, following threats of legal action from Disney and complaints from other entertainment giants. In the last few days, videos made using the latest version of the app Seedance have proliferated online. Many have been lauded for their realism. But the trend has also sparked alarm from several Hollywood studios that have accused the AI platform’s makers of copyright infringement. On Friday, Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance accusing it of supplying Seedance with a ‘pirated library’ of the studio’s copyrighted characters, including those from Marvel and Star Wars.” (02/16/26)
- FCC finds no violations in Bad Bunny halftime show
Source: NBC Sports
“Many were triggered by the Bad Bunny halftime show at Super Bowl LX, largely because it became the latest fuel for the American outrage and counter outrage machine. Some complained to the FCC about the supposedly profane nature of the lyrics they loudly complained they didn’t understand anyway, because they weren’t in English. Whatever the language, an initial FCC review concluded that the show didn’t violate applicable decency regulations.” (02/16/26)
- ICE tyranny is what democracy looks like
Source: Orange County Register
by Ben Bayer“As ICE tactics continue to undermine due process rights, the New York Times editorial board and kindred others have reflected on the role ICE plays in a broader challenge the Trump administration poses to democracy. Trump’s immigration policies are dramatically unjust. But meaningful reflection on what’s wrong with them means recognizing an uncomfortable fact: they are not ‘undemocratic’ but all too much a product of democracy. It’s an uncomfortable fact that Donald Trump won the 2024 election, not just in the electoral college but by 2 million in the popular vote. And he did it by loudly campaigning for his immigration policy. He promised to carry out ‘the largest deportation effort in American history,’ and his running mate suggested starting with deporting 1 million people. Remorseful Trump voters have no excuse for thinking they voted for something else.” (02/16/26)
https://www.ocregister.com/2026/02/16/ice-tyranny-is-what-democracy-looks-like/
- The Constitution is not a bargaining chip for a budget negotiation
Source: The Watch
by Radley Balko“The downside of the budget impasse is that it has made police state tactics a point of negotiation. In any other era, if a local police department were doing what ICE and Border Patrol have done in Chicago, Portland, and Minnesota, a state attorney general or federal government would have launched investigations, and the architects of the policy — Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Corey Lewandowski — would be sweating out questions at oversight hearings. Instead, we’re talking about these abuses in the context of a budget fight. And that risks giving the impression that basic constitutional rights and restraints on police and executive power that date back to the Founding are, actually, negotiable. I guess we’ll see over the next couple weeks if the Democrats believe they really are.” (02/16/26)
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-constitution-is-not-a-bargaining
- The “F” Word
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders“If you asked me to call it as I see it, I’d say President Trump is fasc-ish, fascist lite, or ‘semi-fascist.’ And until recently, writer Jonathan Rauch (whom I’ve long admired) would have agreed with my assessment. But in his Atlantic piece, ‘Yes, it’s Fascism,’ Rauch pulls a Jason Stanley. That is, he comes up with his own laundry list of purportedly fascist indicators to prove that President Trump is, indeed, a fascist, which suggests Trump is uniquely evil in American history. … In setting out to prove that Trump is a fascist, Rauch proves that the President is just an odd species of progressive and that past progressive presidents were fascist, too. Progressivism, after all, is a form of fascism.” (02/16/26)
- Media Freedom … if We Can Keep it!
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
by Ron Paul“Big media and big government are in bed together and they hate the fact that we can communicate with each other without their filters and influence. They long for the days when they could shovel down our throats just what they wanted us to hear and believe. While we may be winning this battle for free expression, we must not fool ourselves into thinking that we have won the war. We must remember just a few years ago during COVID that all it took to have your platform wiped off the face of the earth was to dare question the ‘wisdom’ of Anthony Fauci. Even today there are forces seeking to use the power of the state to silence opinions they disagree with.” (02/16/26)
http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/media-freedomif-we-can-keep-it
- “Kennedy’s Coup” signaled regime change doom loop for US
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos“A look back at Diem’s assassination, setting off the Vietnam War — who says Washington isn’t led by the same self-destructive characters throughout time?” (02/16/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/diem-coup-assasination-vietnam/
- We celebrate civil rights heroes only after they stop making us uncomfortable
Source: Sacramento Bee
“Every February, Black History Month invites Americans to honor the giants of the civil rights movement. We commemorate them in speeches and street names, reassuring ourselves that their struggles belong safely to the past. But history tells a less comforting story. We tend to celebrate Black moral courage only after it has been stripped of urgency — after its disruptions have been neutralized and its challenges to power rendered harmless. The figures we now hold up as national icons were once dismissed as dangerous or destabilizing by moderates and institutions that claimed to support equality while resisting its consequences. This pattern is not accidental. It is structural.” (02/16/26)
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/us-viewpoints/article314715171.html
- Georgia’s January 6 disbarment opinion sets an example for Republicans nationwide
Source: The Hill
by Steven Lubet“The avatars of MAGA-land often appear to operate with almost boundless impunity. President Trump was granted nearly total immunity by the U.S. Supreme Court. He pardoned more than 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters. His officials reflexively defend masked immigration enforcement officials gunning down Minnesota protesters, rather than suspending or at least investigating them. There have been few if any lasting consequences for crimes or malfeasance in Trump world. It was, therefore, truly heartening to see a group of Republicans acknowledge that law-breaking must be meaningfully penalized, even if committed under the MAGA banner. Last month, the nine justices of the Georgia Supreme Court — eight of whom were appointed by Republican governors — unanimously stated that nothing less than disbarment was called for in the case of William McCall Calhoun, Jr., an attorney who had participated in the ‘violent takeover of the Capitol’ on Jan. 6, 2021.” (02/16/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/5738027-calhoun-capitol-insurrection-disbarment/
- AOC tries strategic incomprehensibility
Source: Washington Post
by Jim Geraghty“Lest anyone think I am taking the words of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) out of context, here is, verbatim, her answer to a question during an appearance at the Munich Security Conference last week. … Asked, ‘Would and should the U.S. actually commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move?,’ Ocasio-Cortez replied: ‘You know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a, this is, of course, a very long-standing policy of the United States. And I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.’ This was a yes-or-no question, and Ocasio-Cortez did not answer it.” (02/16/26)
- The Venezuelan Pirouette
Source: Independent Institute
by Alvaro Vargas Llosa“For a subcontinent known for holding ‘honor’ and ‘dignity’ in (disproportionately) high esteem, as seen in everything from pop culture, including soap operas, to political discourse, the turn of events in Venezuela is fascinating. The speed and ease with which the regime’s top figures (interim president Delcy Rodriguez, minister of the Interior Diosdado Cabello, minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino and the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez) have become the incarnation of everything they once despised should put the last nail in the coffin of the myth that the Latin American revolutionary left stands, well, for honor and dignity.” (02/16/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/02/16/venezuelan-pirouette/
- Report: The FBI Bent Its Own Rules To Spy on 1,100 “Sensitive” Targets
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille“If the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wants to scrutinize a person or organization, it must meet certain legal standards demonstrating evidence to support suspicion of criminal activity before opening an investigation. Well, sort of. It turns out that if the feds can’t meet the bar to justify an investigation, they can move ahead by calling their surveillance efforts ‘assessments.’ Then, they can use the assessments to justify full investigations — assuming FBI agents care to follow the rules to begin with, which is not always the case. That’s led to the feds snooping on roughly 1,100 religious figures, journalists, activists, and public officials in recent years.” (02/16/26)
https://reason.com/2026/02/16/the-fbi-bent-its-own-rules-to-spy-on-1100-sensitive-targets/
- John Fetterman, the Last Moderate Democrat
Source: Town Hall
by Jeff Crouere“Decades ago, the Democratic Party had leaders like Presidents Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy who were proud of our country and our citizens. These leaders would have never embarked on a foreign ‘apology tour’ like Former President Barack Obama or allowed our country to be invaded by millions of illegal immigrants like Former President Joe Biden. In the 1980’s, a coalition of moderate congressional Democrats known as the ‘Blue Dogs’ assisted President Ronald Reagan to pass historic tax cuts, which unleashed tremendous economic growth and enabled our country to exorcise the ‘malaise’ that another Democrat President, Jimmy Carter, had infamously described. The ‘Blue Dogs’ were essential for the Reagan agenda to succeed. Additionally, then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-MA) and Reagan were friends and enjoyed occasional evening cocktails together. This relationship helped Reagan and Republicans pass their legislation in a Democrat controlled Congress.” (02/16/26)
- US Economic Growth Looks Slow — Until You Compare It to Europe’s
Source: The Daily Economy
by John Phelan“Over the past decade, the United States has outperformed every other G7 nation. Key measures show why the US is not just getting bigger, but also growing richer.” (02/16/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/us-economic-growth-looks-slow-until-you-compare-it-to-europes/
- Bulwark Takes, 02/16/26
Source: The Bulwark
“Is George W. Bush a Coward — Or Just Wrong?” (02/16/26)
- The Political Orphanage, 02/16/26
Source: The Political Orphanage
“How to Build a Commune: Samwise Rodriguez.” (02/16/26)
https://politicalorphanage.libsyn.com/how-to-build-a-commune-samwise-rodriguez
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 02/16/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Last Chance To Avoid War With Iran?” (02/16/26)
- Free Talk Live, 02/15/26
Source: Free Talk Live
“College kids not leaving their phones alone even during sex :: Dave Ridley calls about Shire history and the ‘New London incident’ Sarah in NM calls about parking cameras :: Skeeter calls about eminent domain :: David calls about ICE and CPB :: Marine arrested for observing after Pretti shooting :: James in AZ calls to complain about an FTL ad :: Mike in TX calls with praise for Ian Freeman and FTL :: Ralph calls about Howard Lutnick and other dirty characters :: Mike calls again about taxes :: 2026-02-15 Hosts: Stu, Riley, Rich E. Rich.” (02/15/26)
- Mean Age Daydream, 02/16/26
Source: Lions of Liberty
“‘Bigger Than Watergate’ Epstein Scandal.” (02/16/26)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/madd-bigger-than-watergate-epstein-scandal